Sunday, January 22, 2012

An Email from Judy

In our popular series "Washing Dr. Mikovits' dirty laundry" we come today to something older, an email from March 2010 from our dear scientist and heroine at large, Dr. Judy Mikovits. While she definitely is Mikovits the Non-Publisher, she is also an affluent email writer.

First of all the current diagnostic testing will define with essentially 100% accuracy XMRV infected patients.

Essentially 100% accuracy? "Essentially"? What about the false negatives? What about false positives?

"Diagnostic testing will define … infected patients"? WTF?

What the fuck is wrong with Dr. Mikovits to write such bullshit? If someone will butch up such a simple sentence, then she should refrain from writing to patients. I get the feeling she is delibertly trying to obfuscate the issues at hand.

The negatives are more difficult as there are additional tests that can only be done in the research lab at this time and not in a clinical setting such as VIPDx.

There are more ways to come up with a false positive result? Gee, do you want another $500 for that?

The most important test is to check your blood for an antibody to the virus.

Here already we can see Dr. Mikovits throwing out PCR, half an year after Lombardi et al. 2009. Even her own lab's PCR is not good enough, or what? A total reversal to the medical science of absolutly ANY other pathogen, where PCR is the gold standard to judge whether an pathogen is active.

The mind boggles.

If you are positive in the serology test and have an antibody to the virus, you have evidence of infection but at the time your blood was drawn the amount of virus in your blood was below the limit that could be detected by the most sensitive test currently available clinically, which is the the one done at VIPDx. that means while you tested XMRV negative..it could be a false negative.

Come on. SRSLY?

There is so much wrong with this one sentence. Or this three sentences? It's kind of hard to tell what we are dealing with her. Let's call it a paragraph.

There is so much wrong with this paragraph.

First of all a positive antibody-serology test could very well be just that: a false positive – a thought that is *NOT* present in the mind of Dr. Mikovits AT ALL. That a test could just be a lab artifact hasn't crossed Dr. Mikovits mind. So no, it could be just a test result and not "evidence" of an infection.

Secondly, "XMRV" testing was in its infancy, so how Dr. Mikovits could display such a level of confidence in these tests to not have false positives is just mind boggling. Especially, when she admits there could be false negatives! WHAT THE FLYING FUCK?

And thirdly that the VIPDx version of "serologic testing" might be expensive useless piece of shit testing not worth the paper the results are printed on hasn't crossed the mind of that fine scientist.

And VIPDx is the only company (apart from RedLabs in Europe) that I know of that sold XMRV tests "clinically". No, strike that: they sold something they claimed to be a XRMV test.

Here we have someone, who just half a year ago published a study claiming to have found a virus in patients and is now in the middle of selling worthless tests to patients, before anybody else confirmed it even to be the causative agent in that disease.

Sensibly warning of a pathogen? Or reckless fraudster?

We are testing the hypothesis that XMRV is to CFS as HIV is to AIDS.

Testing the hypothesis? You are selling tests to patients and don't even know if the test is relevant?

Oh, sorry, you just wanted to do some fear-mongering by throwing in HIV and AIDS. Go on.

There are many people with HIV who don’t have AIDS (because they are getting treatment).

And the WPI wants to sell: treatment. Nice.

But by definition if you have ME you must have XMRV.

BY WHAT FUCKING DEFINITION???? And just two sentences ago you said it was a hypothesis you investigated? Are you fucking with us? What sick shit is that?

I make that analogy in presentations because CFS is such a waste basket diagnosis and testing the hypothesis that XMRV is a major player in ME/CFS like HIV in AIDS, will get treatment and research money into biomedical research for XMRV and end the psychiatric bias that has been the history of the disease.

You are not "testing the hypothesis", you are advocating it, you sick fuck.

We are intensly lucky that Lipkin got involved, otherwise you sick fuck could have singlehandedly destroyed the little credibility that actual biomedical research into ME/CFS is gaining, no thanks to you.

And I want biomedical research into ME/CFS – I don't want money being wasted on "research for XMRV" on account of some deliberate XMRV VP62 plasmid contamination.

Get lost you sick fuck.

Do I think there is only one XMRV??

Yeah, do you?? Do you?? Please?? Tell us??

Absolutely NOT..

Behold my magic fear-mongering stick. Double dot.

there is an HTLV2 and an HIV2 both of which have much milder symptoms associated than the variants HIV-1 and HTLV1?

there is. Question mark.

What if the first XMRV to be associated with ME/CFS is not the most pathogenic variant.

What if Dr. Mikovits is talking out of her ass? What if I am the Queen of England? And what if the first XMRV is actually the second? Or third? What is the first XMRV anyway?

And does Dr. Mikovits deliberately write such awful bullshit sentences?

What if there is a much more pathogenic XMRV-2 out there??

Yeah!! What if?? Nobody knows!!

In the UK in China??

The UK is in China!!

Maybe the reason others don’t find it is because they will not do the BIOLOGICAL VIROLOGY and ISOLATE THE VIRUS like the WPI and VIPDx have done.

Behold the all caps BIOLOGICAL VIROLOGY!! What a obfuscating piece of shit.

And if only these labs would ISOLATE THE VIRUS that we have put with the XMRV VP62 plasmid there in the first place!!

NO ONE else has even ATTEMPTED the experiments in the Science paper.

Yeah, because everybody was actually trying to FIND THE VIRUS!! IN PATIENTS!! And not XMRV VP62 plasmid in lab-contaminated samples.

Electron micrographs don’t lie and a budding virus or immune response cannot be a contaminant.

Photos don't lie.

Yeah right.

And one can't fake lab results.

Yeah right.

We do stand behind our hypothesis that somehow XMRV is hurting your immune system so that it cannot fight ordinary pathogens and after a long time of chronic expression of XMRV (or a short time if you have other genetic immune deficiencies) your immune system simply cannot function normally and you become permanently disabled…

"Hurting" the immune system? "Somehow"?

And where is the evidence that the immune system "cannot fight ordinary pathogens"?

What a fear-mongering piece of shit.

Please feel free to discuss my response with your group..

Will do.

We will test everyone that tested negative to see if we can find antibodies in your blood and look for that variant that we describe..that is evidence of XMRV infection.

"that variant that we describe"? What the fuck? You describe VP62.

And you will test negative samples until you get a positive result? And that biased approached is "evidence"? Of what, your confirmation bias?

There is so much that we don’t know about the virus.

Don't tell!

Recall that the first isolation of HIV was from a single AIDS patient published in late 1982 and it was not until 2 years later that it was associated with AIDS with the kind of evidence that we put into that first paper.

What a sick fuck Dr. Mikovits is. Telling people that "tested" negative for XMRV that they "are likely still infected with XMRV or its closest cousin". What a fear-mongering piece of shit, sowing uncertainty and doubt just like that.

The Other Disclaimer

My opinion does not substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and anything posted here is not intended to replace the misguided advise given out by many health care professionals.

I am neither a medical professional nor an employed scientist, just a person who is trying to use his head in order to make "heads or tails" out of the available information on diseases and human health.

I have a strong disdain for "believe based medicine" from people who torture evidence until it fits their confirmation bias, no matter whether it is "alternative" or "mainstream" medicine.

Nobody is giving me money or other incentives for what I post here. My main interest is to further the understanding of the health problems that torment me and countless others.

If you have questions regarding a medical condition, then I am obliged to ask you to seek out the usually misguided advice of your trusted physician or another trusted and qualified health care provider. In case you get conflicting information: Try to get enough information and use your head.

The Usual Disclaimer

I release all material authored by me and published here into the public domain – though mentioning the original source and providing a link back would be nice.

All incorporated material and all citations are used for here criticism, comment and news reporting under the "Fair Use" statue. I don't claim ownership for any incorporated copyrighted material used here, as the copyright still lies with their respective copyright owners.

Guiding Quotes

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"Theodosius Dobzhansky

"Evolution is cleverer than you are."Orgel's Second Rule

"We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction."Otto Neurath

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."Thomas Kuhn on paradigm shifts, using a quote from Max Planck

“Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results, only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim…”Claude Bernard

"Sometimes a thing gets broke can't be fixed."Kaylee

"The tragedy about each experience is, that one makes it, after one would have needed it."Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (attributed)

"Of all the human discoveries, the discovery of errors should be the most important."Stanisław Jerzy Lec

"Tony Mach, like the establishment, is no friend of ours."An anonymous coward, defending a fraudulent quack